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"Zaaaaaaach, I’m so fucking cold."
“Hmm? What?” Zach pushed sleep aside like a heavy blanket, and turned over to face Chris.
“I’m c-cold.”
Chris lay curled up in the fetal position, most of the duvet clutched around him, shivering so hard his teeth chattered. They were in Utah, but the weather, they’d been told, had been unusually mild. There wasn’t even snow on the streets outside their hotel. Concerned, Zach pushed himself up on his elbow and reached out for Chris.
“You’re burning up!” Zach exclaimed, pressing the backs of his fingers against Chris’s forehead and then his cheeks.
“Doesn’t f-feel like it.”
“You must have come down with a flu or something. Let me get you some more blankets, OK?”
Chris nodded miserably and Zach left the bed. Switching on the light, he went to the closet and found the extra blankets bundled away there. There were two of them – the kind of thin ones they gave people in the hospital, so he doubled them up and laid them carefully on top of Chris.
“That better?” he asked.
“I g-guess?”
No, Zach didn’t think it was, if he was still shivering. His next stop was the bathroom, where he grabbed both terry cloth robes and added them to the pile. “Now?” he asked.
Zach didn’t think it could be possible, but Chris curled in on himself even tighter and his only answer was a low, pitiful whimper. “Should I call a doctor?”
“No – no doctors!” Chris said vehemently, though his voice was muffled by one of the sleeves of the second robe, which had fallen forward over his face.
Zach stood there rubbing at his hair with one hand worriedly. He’d never really seen Chris sick before – the odd head cold, sure, but he was generally a healthy guy. This was worrying. He tried to think about what his mother would do, and had a sudden revelation.
Walking to the other side of the bed, he climbed back in. Chris whimpered again when the covers were pulled back and what little warmth he felt escaped.
“Sorry, baby, I’ll get you warm, I promise.” Zach scooched closer to Chris under the covers and reached for him. Chris tensed up at first, but Zach persisted. “Come here, I’ve got you, that’s it.” Soon, Zach was lying propped against the pillows with Chris on top of him, his head cradled on Zach’s chest. “Is that a little better?” he asked.
Chris nodded his head and Zach rested his hand on it, feeling the heat radiating into his palm. He leaned forward and kissed the crown of Chris’s head. “When I was little, my mom would sit with me in my bed like this when I had a fever.”
“Yeah?”
“It was really soothing, and it made me feel safe. Especially after my dad died.”
“Aww,” Chris said sympathetically.
“Sometimes she’d sing to me.”
“What would she sing?”
“Carpenters songs,” he admitted with some reluctance. “Don’t laugh!”
“I’m not laughing. It sounds nice. My dad used to put brandy in hot tea for me.”
“What? I think I may be scandalized.”
“Not a lot – like a spoonful.”
“Still!” Zach said with mock outrage.
“This one time, when I was really little, I got so sick they had to take me to the hospital. They thought it was meningitis.”
Zach pulled Chris a little closer, just the idea of it disturbing. “No, really?”
“They had to give me a spinal tap and everything. That was the worst. Dad held my hand the whole time, even after the test was done, until I felt better. Whenever I got sick after that, he’d always sit with me and hold my hand.”
Zach took Chris’s hand in his and held it close. “Like this?”
Chris sighed. “Yeah, just like that.” He clutched at Zach, pulling himself a little closer; Zach could still feel him shivering, tiny tremors radiating out from his body. “Don’t let go, OK?” Chris asked after a minute, his voice so quiet Zach barely heard it.
“Never in a million years.”
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